Just as Ontario is considering expanding its protection of migrant workers, a new study warns it's doomed to fail if existing loopholes are not fixed.

Liza Draman, now an advocate with the Caregivers’ Action Centre, said recruiters still charge illegal fees to job-seekers and employers continue to deduct unlawful costs from their nannies’ paycheques.

In 2007, Liza Draman paid a Toronto recruiter $3,500 to get her a job as a live-in caregiver in Canada.

Three years after Ontario enacted new laws to protect foreign live-in caregivers from abuse, Draman, now an advocate with the Caregivers’ Action Centre, said recruiters still charge illegal fees to job-seekers and employers continue to deduct unlawful costs from their nannies’ paycheques.

Just as Ontario is pondering new legislation (Bills 146 and 161) to expand the current protection to all migrant workers, a new study released by the Metcalf Foundation Tuesday said the proposed changes are doomed to fail if the province does not address current loopholes in the system that have allowed the exploitation to continue.

“Little has changed for us,” said Draman, 43, who has met all her employment hours and is on course to receiving her permanent resident status.

“The stories we hear are heart-wrenching. We had a free legal clinic recently for caregivers who just arrived. A participant said her employer had deducted money spent on her plane ticket and recruitment from her salary. They even had her sign an agreement to pay back the money.”

According to the Metcalf Foundation report, such practices are still rampant as two-thirds of the 200 live-in caregivers surveyed said they had been charged recruitment fees despite the labour protection law Ontario introduced in 2010.

Despite the government’s intent to better protect live-in caregivers with the 2010 legislation, the study found that provincial officials have only managed to recover $12,100 in illegal fees from recruiters and there are only eight ongoing investigations against them.

Live-in caregivers who participated in the study said they were typically charged between $3,500 and $5,000, plus airfare for work in Ontario, with the highest fee reported being $12,000.

While Guatemalan workers reported paying $2,500 recruitment fees for farm work in Ontario, Filipino workers who were brought in to work in food processing jobs are often charged as much as $7,000 to land a job, a whopping jump from the $3,750 to $5,000 range reported five years ago.

The root of the abuse, said report author Fay Faraday, is the Ontario government’s failure to regulate and actively monitor and enforce clear standards in transnational recruitment that leaves workers vulnerable to exploitation.

“The disparity between the promise of the Ontario law and the reality of exploitation is vast. Does it really do what it says it does? The answer is, ‘No,’” said Faraday, a Toronto constitutional and human rights lawyer.

“The Ontario model is out of step with the best practices in Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. It is failing to get any meaningful protection for the low-wage migrant population.”

Faraday said it is crucial for the province to move beyond the clichés of blaming the “unscrupulous recruiters” and “exorbitant fees” and address these systemic issues now.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada data showed that the number of foreign workers in Canada doubled from 160,740 in 2006 to 338,213 in 2012. In Toronto alone, the number skyrocketed by 237 per cent in the same period, from 27,083 to 64,284.

Every year since 2006, said Faraday, between 60 per cent and 67 per cent of all federal government approvals authorizing Ontario employers to hire migrant workers have been for workers in low-wage jobs.

“We need to look at migrant workers not as disposable labour but future citizens,” said Faraday. “They are human beings and not just commodities.”

Like other provinces, she said, Ontario must move towards regulatory regimes that include licensing of recruiters, mandatory registration of employers who hire migrant workers, financial security deposits to compensate workers who have been charged illegal fees, and proactive investigation, audits and enforcement by labour protection officials.

These proactive systems should mandate employers and recruiters to keep records on their workers, the nature of work being performed and details of employment and recruitment contracts for compliance purposes, said the study.

“Publicly disclosing the full length of the recruiter’s supply chain and imposing joint and several liability on the recruiter and employer aim to hold the licensed recruiter or registered employer accountable at all stages of the recruitment process,” said the 98-page report.

The new foreign worker protection bill tabled by the Ontario Legislature in December gives the government the powers to create registries of recruiters and employers.

However, Syed Hussan of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change said it doesn’t mandate the government to do so. And worse, it allows the province to exclude federal migrant worker program participants from the registries, making it “utterly pointless for low-wage and precarious workers.”

Draman, who now works as a cleaner, said live-in caregivers who dare to complain about the recruitment fees are often discouraged when officials dismiss their cases because the transactions occurred abroad.

“Many live-in caregivers put up with the exploitation because they need to meet the employment hours to earn their permanent resident status. What’s the point of complaining if they are dismissed and can’t get their (recruitment) money back,” said Draman.

“Everyone is profiting from migrant workers,” she added. “We need real enforcement right from here, in Ontario.”

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